


It Changes

by backtoblack101



Category: Carol (2015), The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
Genre: Angst, Carol/Abby past relationship, F/F, Past Relationship(s), Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:10:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6462550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtoblack101/pseuds/backtoblack101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby's musings on her relationship with Carol and how it differs from Carol's relationship with Therese (and how she's fine with that. Really, she is).</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Changes

**Author's Note:**

> I will physically fight anyone that tries to tell me Abby isn't still madly and totally in love with Carol.

_“Tell me you know what you’re doing?”_

The first time Abby had asked Carol that question Carol had been between her legs, leaving lipstick stains on the inside of her thigh.

“Tell me you know what you’re doing…” She’d managed between hot, shallow breaths.

Carol had lifted her head only for a second. Just long enough to dazzle her with a wicked smirk. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

She figured it out rather quickly as a matter of fact.

That was still Abby’s most cherished memory of their short time together as lovers. Not necessarily the sex – though lord knows she hadn’t complained. It was how open Carol had been that first night, and how open she’d been in response. They’d talked about everything, lying in Abby’s childhood bed, wrapped in one another’s arms.

Carol’s arms had felt like home that night as well in the way the four walls of her room never had and she’d wrapped her arms as tightly around Carol as she dared in hope of offering her the same sense of acceptance and belonging.

Eventually she’d learned that if you love someone enough it was sometimes kinder to release them.

She wondered sometimes if Therese felt the same desire to hold onto Carol for dear life, still failing to understand someone like Carol couldn’t be held, couldn’t be convinced to stay if it was not what she desired.

She doubted very much Therese ever need worry.

_“I can’t help you with that.”_

What else was she to tell Harge? That the feeling would pass? That he’d move on and find someone else? Maybe he would. Maybe she would too, though for now she hadn’t, and until such a time as Carol’s piercing grey eyes no longer consumes her dreams there was no help she could offer Harge that would stop the way he was hurting right now.

Loving Carol was like loving the sun and right now she and Harge were Icarus, both plummeting back towards reality.

And of course she loved Carol. She loved her more than she’d ever imagined she could love another person. She’d loved her from the moment she’d met her at ten years old and part of her was sure that if she lived to one hundred she’d still love her.

Therese loved her too though, that much she knew for sure. Therese loved her in the right way as well; devoted enough to treat her the way she deserved to be treated, yet independent enough to give Carol the space she sometimes needed.

Therese loved Carol the way Carol deserved to be loved and it wasn’t that Abby didn’t love her that way as well, she just simply wasn’t the right person in Carol’s eyes and that was fine too.

_“Then it changed. It changes.”_

What she’d wanted to say was that Carol changes. Changes her mind, her opinions, her ability to love and be loved in return.

She’d looked Therese in the eye though and in that instance seen herself and she knew then she didn’t have it in her to say anything to Therese that could hurt her more than she was already hurting. Really she wasn’t even sure there was a way to hurt her any more than she was already hurting.

For now the wax had melted from Therese’s wings too, and she was plummeting, plummeting, back towards the ocean, back towards reality except this time, this time Carol was there to catch her.

For Therese loving Carol was the knowing that she’d always be caught.

For Abby loving Carol was freefalling through the sky, waiting to hit water though the ocean remained distant. She didn’t mind though, not in the slightest, because for a brief moment she had touched the sun and that was enough for her.

Really, it was.

**Author's Note:**

> (any spelling mistakes are my own. I know i should be a better person and actually proof read, but what ya gonna do?)


End file.
